Mekotekan: Protecting village from bad forces

The Jakarta Post, Mengwi, Bali, Monday June 02 2014


On Saturday afternoon during the Kuningan celebration, hundreds of men from Munggu village in Mengwi, Badung regency, some 20 kilometers north of Denpasar, were impatient for the Mekotekan battle to start.

Held every 210 days, or 6 months according to the Balinese calendar, Mekotekan is a much-anticipated, war-like ritual for residents of 12 banjar (hamlets) of Munggu village to perform the centuries-old tradition, which is aimed at ridding the village of any evil.

Clad in middle-level (madya) traditional Balinese costumes, males of the village were armed with 3.5-meter-long wooden sticks.

Under the heat of the scorching sun, participating villagers gathered at Pura Dalem (temple of the dead) in Munggu village and later marched toward the Pura Puseh, village temple to pray before starting the Mekotekan ritual.

All participants were sprinkled with holy water as spiritual protection.

Derived from the words tek.. tek.. kan.. from the sounds of stricken wooden sticks, the Mekotekan ritual is believed to date back to the 17th century during the Mengwi kingdom. Legend has it that the Mekotekan ritual was conducted to welcome the kingdom’s soldiers back from the battlefield after fighting against soldiers from East Java’s Blambangan kingdom. On their way to the center of the Mengwi kingdom, which was Munggu village, local residents cheered them as the winners of the war.

The ritual was halted in 1915 when the Dutch colonial administration banned it. But not holding the ritual took a toll on the lives of many people in the village. The outbreak of various diseases and other calamities hit the village, making people fall sick. Some even died.

Leaders of the village strongly believed that the gods and their ancestors were angry that the ritual was no longer being held, and it was later resumed to dispel any negative forces that had entered the village.

I Made Rai Sujana, chief of Munggu customary village, said on Saturday that the ritual had niskala (intangible-spiritual) and sekala (tangible-worldly) meanings.

“In daily life, the ritual aims at closely unifying all members of the village. The ritual serves as a strong glue to keep people together,” Sujana said.

As a niskala, the ritual is intended to protect the village and its people from disaster and other catastrophes.

On Saturday afternoon, Munggu village was filled with cheer and joy. The participating members were divided into two teams. Each team had to face each other on the “battlefield”.

In the past, people used metal spears in the ritual. “Now, they are only allowed to use wooden sticks,” the chief village said.



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